As with most things, love comes in variations. Like an assorted box of donuts, if you will. You might have your crushes, your summer flings, your one-sided fictional love affairs predestined for Titanic-proportions of tragedy; but there is, as many would say, the ultimate contender, the pound for pound in the game of romance: The Soulmate.

​The concept of soulmates goes back centuries, to Plato and several age-old religions and myths. The theories, you’ll find, are quite big on the idea of wholeness: such as the one where people were born with two sexes, split into two, then fated to roam the earth longing to find their other half. But as the idea entered mainstream consciousness, fairy tales and vampire trilogies and other examples of popular media culture managed to reshape it into the form it has today – that is, two people, fated to be together despite all odds, be it by the will of some higher power or the karmic convergence of a former love from a past life. The soulmate completes you, inspires you,and brings out parts of you that you didn’t know existed. The connection between you is inexplicable; they can read you like a book, finish your sentences – and then maybe your sandwiches, and that’s okay too, because even if you fight about it your soulmate is meant to complement you effortlessly. They're the yin to your yang; a perfect harmony. Finding your soulmate often feels like coming home, as they say, and you wonder how you ever saw the appeal in a cat lady’s solitary future.

​No matter who you are, or where you are, or how ultimately sawi you are in this loveless existence, there is hope that somewhere out there, someone is waiting for you – it’s just a matter of looking. And waiting. And maybe praying.

​For such a grand thought, the allure is entirely sensible. How comforting it is, to know we are never truly alone in the world. And while no one can prove the existence of soulmates, no one can disprove it either; so for all die-hard romantics out there, it may very well be a real thing.

​But while understandably attractive, I often find the concept to be quite illusory. The problem, I think, lies in its perfection. It promises love in a pretty bow-wrapped package; when you find your soulmate, everything is supposed to be crystal clear – an instant magicking away of all life’s troubles, a smooth coming together of you and your partner’s jagged edges, culminating in a series of escapades so quixotic it’d make the writers of Casablanca weep in shame. Love, as they say, is something that’s found, like that shiny coin you scraped up from the sidewalk.

​The concept assumes that inherently, we are incomplete. That life’s ultimate struggle is to discover The One. And oh, the lengths we’d go to safeguard our happily ever after; we hold every person we meet under the Soulmate Compatibility Test, ticking off items on our invisible handy-dandy checklist: Makes me feel whole? Check. Inspires me to fight world hunger? All the time. Uncanny mind-reading sentence-finishing capabilities? Well...

​And because relationships – real relationships – are flawed, they ultimately fall short against this measuring stick of perfection. We grow impatient, unsatisfied; we toss out relationships that have a real chance of growth at the first sign of anything other than the childhood Disney fairy tale we’ve fashioned for ourselves. But love isn’t perfect, it isn't this easy, pretty little thing that’s “found” or “born”. More than anything, love is work – tears and time and gritted teeth – and like all else, flimsy beyond belief. And, contrary to popular belief, love can’t conquer mountains on its own. It needs us to do the conquering #hugot. (Thanks Mr. Levithan).

​Let’s now return to our donut metaphor. There is a consensus that soulmates, often in the romantic sense, are the ultimate kind of love; the epitome of what we should aspire to have. But if love is like a box of donuts, that comes in different flavors – who’s to say what kind of donut is the best? Who died and made you an authority? Wherever your preference lies – be it the plain glazed ones, or drown-me-in-sprinkles, or both; maybe you don’t even like donuts to begin – not one is better than the other. Love manifests itself in different ways – different, not stronger. The hierarchy is a myth; romantic love is not the standard, nor is it purer, or any greater. To say otherwise reveals a very narrow, very ignorant view of the world. And frankly, you miss out on a lot of incredible flavors.

​Maybe love is in three other people. Maybe love was never romance, but in someone who you can’t think of kissing, ever. Maybe the love you needed was right inside you. Maybe love is confusing and transcends everything we know. Like a love that doesn’t last. That meets you only on Tuesdays. Over coffee, when you’re stressed out of your mind, and the existentialist tendencies begin. You may not even meet again after this, but that’s okay – because they’re right where you need them to be, and the company can be just as profound and meaningful as it is fleeting. And right now, at this moment, you together, are kind of – perfect.

Conyo kid – there was something intrinsically scornful about being called one. The image it upheld was equally undesirable; they were those rich, pompous kids who tried too hard, tongues rolling with broken phrases that never knew where to properly place themselves in sentences. It was easy, fostering that disdain – even years later as I find myself – ironically enough, one of them.

Of course, that was only up until college. That was where I met a chock-full of them, and made the discovery that - surprise! They were just normal kids, who possessed the ability to seamlessly transition from one language to another with the ease of someone trying to tie their shoes. That is to say – it was completely natural, and, knowing where they came from, hardly extraordinary. It wasn’t like they tried to or anything, unlike what the stereotype had so zealously claimed. For something as everyday as that, one has to wonder where all the contempt comes from.

Fast forward to the month of August to celebrate Buwan ng Wika, and I can’t help but sense that same brand of disdain all over again. It’s that time of the year where we’ll predictably be subject to another one of those speeches. You know, those speeches. Every year, without fail, we’re told about our tendencies to be a little too fascinated with the western world, another terminal case of colonial mentality, damn the conyo kid and all that jazz.

There’s a lot to be said about that, I agree. There’s much work to be done, needless to say, before we can sort through all those internalized issues, but really – it’s not like it’s news or anything. We know this reality; we live in it. But lately I’ve been sensing a pattern, where we constantly berate ourselves past a point where it’s actually useful anymore. We’re caught in this vicious cycle of blame and shame and never once stop to think about how some things we just can’t help.

For instance: advocates of homegrown products say it is our responsibility to buy local. But while support is ideal, favoring non-Filipino products over our own isn’t a crime. Sometimes it's just about taste, or quality, and sometimes we have to swallow that we don't always make the best stuff.

We say conyo like it's an insult, but brush over the fact that kids now are taught in English, but live in Filipino spaces. It's a hybrid language, born of the experiences Filipinos are experiencing as we speak. And if language is a mere a reflection of a nation, why do we shun it? Why are we told to hide it, squash it down, lest it fester? Why tell ourselves it isn’t happening? Just because we subscribe to some patterns of the West does not necessarily mean we're degrading our cultural heritage nor is it a manifestation of our inferiority.

We need to consider that maybe, just maybe, having traces of different cultures within our own is not such a bad thing, as we all have come to believe. Nitpicking what’s on your plate won’t help you clean it off.The way I see it – we’re our own worst enemies. We keep beating ourselves up for not being this romanticized ideal of what Filipinos should be, instead of acknowledging that we're a country in a state of constant evolution. We're dynamic, caught in a liminal state, and everywhere we look, we can see signs of that. Globalization has that effect, and it's increasingly difficult to try to hold on to that traditional view of being "truly Filipino." I mean, what is "truly Filipino"? I don't suppose even some of us know, because we keep looking for a Philippines that has long slipped through our fingers.

The real Philippines, the Philippines that exists beyond mere idealism, is the very same one we're ashamed of - the one full of "conyo kids" and "the wannabes.” It’s the hybrid nation, the one with the self-imposed identity crisis. That's the one. And I think, the moment we quit damning ourselves to a spiraling void of self-hatred and stop subjecting ourselves to a measuring stick against other Asian countries who have such a strong sense of identity – because, honestly, we just don't have the same history – and accept the nation that we have right now, as it is, is the glittering moment of clarity where we can finally start flourishing as a nation.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a call to arms against curing this country of its cultural inferiority complex. But we need to stop putting parameters on who and what we should be as Filipinos and just try to embrace the hybrid Philippines we have now – because above all, isn't it love for your country that really makes a difference?